Boccaccio's 'Decameron': Rewriting the Christian Middle Ages and the Lyric Tradition by Dino S. Cervigni

Abstract

Reviewed by: Boccaccio's 'Decameron': Rewriting the Christian Middle Ages and the Lyric Tradition by Dino S. Cervigni Charlotte Alton Boccaccio's 'Decameron': Rewriting the Christian Middle Ages and the Lyric Tradition. By Dino S. Cervigni. (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 548) Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies Press. 2021. viii+558 pp. £88. ISBN 978–0–86698–606–9. Dino Cervigni's latest monograph provides an extensive study of Boccaccio's masterpiece which is exceptionally well timed in its publication in the light of the [End Page 256] increased readership of the Decameron in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Cervigni's approach is particularly pertinent given its focus upon the text's critique and reconstruction of societal norms in the aftermath of the plague which forms the backdrop to Boccaccio's text. Cervigni reads the Decameron's first ninety tales as a parodic rewriting of the societal, historical, and lyric traditions of the Christian Middle Ages and suggests that the Tenth Day sets out a new ethical code for society and literature in the wake of the plague, based upon human and liberal principles such as generosity and sacrifice. Cervigni's work asserts the importance of the text's overarching narrative and dismisses the labelling of this architectural feature as a 'frame' or 'cornice', as it is so often referred to by critics. Instead, he reads this 'novella portante', voiced by Boccaccio's narrator, as the principal location of meaning within the text. Cervigni's advancing of this 'novella portante' addresses the limitations of fragmentary readings of Boccaccio's text which occur through the discussion of isolated novelle. Through his concern with this overarching narrative, Cervigni's emphasis also highlights areas of the text that have eluded significant critical attention thus far. The book comprises an Introduction and fourteen chapters, ten of which are dedicated to each of the text's ballads that feature in the 'novella portante' at the close of each day of narration. The focus upon the ballads is particularly significant to this work's contribution. Building on his own previous work on the ballads, with this monograph Cervigni provides ten rich, close readings of each of the text's ballads and exposes them as significant textual loci. The book offers an original and necessary approach to the Decameron by demonstrating the ballads' significance in the construction of meaning across the text, thus providing a hugely important intervention in the literature surrounding the Decameron. The ballads are frequently passed over by the critical literature and certainly have not thus far been widely considered as essential to textual meaning. Cervigni takes these poetic sites as key moments of introspection on the part of the narrators that provide a key through which we may read their ten narrated tales. This approach thus contributes a further important intervention in the ongoing debate within Boccaccio Studies surrounding the individuality of the ten members of the brigata. Cervigni's focus upon the ballads as keys for understanding the members of the brigata as unique subjects offers a notable contribution to that debate by arguing that 'the evening ballad accomplishes something no other daily activity can achieve: it offers all members of the group the opportunity of revealing aspects of their inner selves which would not have become manifest otherwise' (p. 101). Cervigni's far-reaching work makes a substantial contribution to Boccaccio Studies by addressing a significant gap in the scholarly literature relating to the Decameron, by arguing for the 'essential function of the ten evening ballads' (p. vii), and by highlighting the importance of the 'novella portante' to the text's meaning. This monograph also offers a reading that is opportune in its concern with the [End Page 257] disruption and reconstruction of tradition in response to plague, which our own contemporary readership will no doubt find to be particularly thought-provoking. Charlotte Alton Selwyn College, Cambridge Copyright © 2023 Modern Humanities Research Association